


the weight of time and forgiveness

by TurntechLoveThis (angelcult)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Forgiveness, Healing, M/M, Mild Blood, Mind Control, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Temporary Amnesia, complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:42:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelcult/pseuds/TurntechLoveThis
Summary: Dave can see into billions of timelines at any given second, but there’s a timeline that he always avoided- his own.Taking a step years into his past, he discovers a way to fix everything that was broken.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 76





	the weight of time and forgiveness

Time travel is a scary thing, especially when you’re ability to travel through time sometimes leads you to the doorstep of an apartment building that no longer exists.

Dave frowns, he stares at the door and he thinks about what awaits him behind it.

He waves a hand and the cameras that litter the house short out, he needs to be alone with him, or as alone as they can get with the overbearing presence that will linger over the both of them.

Opening the door, he can hear the patter of feet and his heart pounds in his chest, it’s like deja vu.

He steps in and closes the door.

Dave knows himself, almost better than anyone.

“Dave? I know you’re hiding behind the futon, come on out.” He doesn’t say “I won’t hurt you”, because that’s always a sign that he would, in fact, be hurt. 

The boy steps from behind the futon and freezes, and stares.

He isn’t wearing shades, they’d probably hurt to wear anyway.

  
  


He’s at least seven right now, his nose is still healing from a fracture, he will be scarred for life.

He’ll lie to John and said he got tackled in gym class during a game of football despite being homeschooled.

The lie will work, the lies always worked, even if they were true, even if they were pleas for help hidden beneath layers and layers of irony.

Little Dave, that’s what he’ll call him, he isn’t even panicking. 

He’s just staring at him. 

“Bro’s sleep.”

Dave nods and he holds out his hand.

Little Dave is hesitant to step closer but eventually, he’s within Dave’s reach, and now that he’s close enough, Dave can pick him up.

He’s too light and he can feel his ribs beneath the too-big shirt.

“Let’s go talk.”

He floats, perks of being a god, and they go into Little Dave’s room and then they climb into the closet and shut the door.

Light filters in through the slats and Dave is almost overwhelmed, he hates small spaces even though this used to be his sanctuary.

  
  


“Are you me?”

“Yep. David Elizabeth Strider in the flesh, not a hair out of place.”

And Little Dave smiles, because he sounds like he’s trying to comfort them both.

“You’re scared of the closet.”

Dave would be unnerved by this assessment from anyone else, but from himself, it feels more like stating a fact than it does anything else. 

He’s met enough versions of himself to know when they’re actually trying to throw a jab his way, but he was weirdly honest when he was seven, so he knows it’s true.

He _is_ scared.

“Don’t need a closet where I’m from.”

“Really?”

And he hates his enthusiasm.

No child should have to hide in their closet, not from their brother of all people, not from the person who was supposed to _love_ them more than anything. 

Dave’s eyes tear up.

“Yeah, really.”

Little Dave’s eyes light up and Dave can see it— he can see the longing for freedom, for happiness, for safety.

When Dave was seven, all he wanted was to be safe.

“Is.. is Bro there?”

Dave hesitates, because this Dave doesn’t hate his Bro, hell, ** _he_** doesn’t even hate him, if anything, he saddens him.

“That’s for you to find out, little dude.”

Little Dave’s brows furrow, and Dave can see the gears turning, as he pieces together Dave’s own lack of bruises and the way he looks relaxed.

Or as relaxed as he can get.

“Bro’s real sick.” Little Dave admits softly. “He doesn’t mean to be this way, you know?”

And Dave wants to argue, it’s such a sudden and out of left field feeling, that he can only stare in shocked silence. 

“What?”

“He’s sick.” Little Dave repeats and taps his temple. “Because of Cal, I think. He whispers things to him.”

Dave can’t remember thinking that when he was this age, is he in the wrong timeline? He can feel the ticking of clocks, he’s syncing himself and no- this is the right one.

“Cal can’t talk.” It’s a lie, the fucker can sure laugh and _control minds,_ you know, like every other two foot tall puppet out there.

“He laughs. He laughs and Bro really hates that. He tried to kill him.”

Dave can vaguely remember that- a time where Bro actually seemed _repulsed_ by Cal, but destroy him?

No, he never did that.

Dave nods to Little Dave’s closet door.

“How long has he been asleep?”

“An hour.”

They have time, Bro can sleep for forever, and sometimes when he’s awake, Dave knows that his mind isn’t with him.

Part of him thinks it never was.

“Are you mad at Bro?”

Mad doesn’t begin to cover it, but Dave can only nod.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he hurts us, he hurts us in ways that he should never-“ And he cuts himself off, because his temper scares him, he has Bro’s temper.

He hates how much of himself reminds him of his shell of a brother.

“What do you mean?” Little Dave’s eyes are wide and Dave can see it, he can see that little glimmer of knowing that he wants someone to say it, so he doesn’t feel like he’s a liar.

“Bro shouldn’t have hit us. Or threw us down the stairs, or tried to drown us, or, or starved us and locked us away from the world.”

He hates the way those red eyes stare up at him in appreciation, Dave remembers that all he ever wanted to know back then was what he’d done wrong.

He would have begged for forgiveness at his Bro’s feet.

“You haven’t done anything. You’ve never done anything wrong to deserve this.”

His vision goes blurry and he takes the shades off, he tries to blink them away but all it does is make them spill over his cheeks.

“You have never deserved this.”

He says this to both of them.

“I can fix it.”

He can fix it, while Little Dave still has the hope that it’ll all be okay, that one day, his brother won’t be so sick. 

“Stay in here.”

Dave puts a finger to his lips and stands up, shakily climbing to his feet and sliding out of the closet.

He lifts himself up, floats, even though he’d be faster than Bro in hand-to-hand combat or a strife. He’s grown in the years he’s been apart from Bro, and he thinks he can do some good with this newfound godship.

He floats to Bro’s room, and eases the door open. 

Bro is asleep, just like he’d been told, but he’s a dangerously light sleeper and Dave is on high alert, he’s shaking, he’s so scared.

He keeps an eye on him as he scans the room, and catches sight of a familiar puppet.

Dave doesn’t consider himself victorious as he grabs it, staring into cold and alive blue eyes.

He chances a glance at Bro and he’s still asleep, he’d have woken up if he’d heard the creak of the floors.

Dave leaves as quietly as he entered, and then back to Little Dave’s room.

He’s sitting on his bed when Dave comes back, and stiffens at the sight of Cal.

“What-what are you doing, we aren’t-“

“It’s okay,” Dave’s grip on Cal is so tight that his hand is starting to cramp. “He’s not going to do anything to you. Not with me here.”

Because for once, Dave has power, he isn’t weak, he’s strong enough to protect himself- in every sense of the word.

“I have to go now though.” Because if Cal calls for help through whatever mental connection he has with Bro, he’s putting Little Dave in a world of trouble.

“I don’t know if this will work, but if it does…” If it does, then Dave thinks he can forgive himself a little more, he thinks he can forgive _Bro_ a little more.

He hopes he’s doing the right thing.

* * *

  
Time travel makes him sick, because he can step through minutes, seconds, entire timelines in the span of a few seconds, but it leaves a lurching feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

He ends up in his room, he’s holding Cal, and he can only stare.

He wants to rip this fucker limb from limb, he is the reason that he was _ruined._

Dave’s teeth grit and his lips twist into an angry sneer as he drops to his knees and rips at the damn thing and he’s screaming, he’s screaming so loud that his throat hurts.

“You ruined me! You fucking stole him from me, you stole him-!” There’s so much cotton and something wet and red- not blood but close.

He rips his chest open and the links from his medallion go scattering across the floor, and he can hear the door opening- it’s probably Karkat.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you so much.” 

Dave’s screams twist up into harsh sobs, he can’t get enough air, he can only cry, falling forward, and crying so hard he chokes.

“You stole him, you stole my brother, you..” His sobs become wordless and he can feel Karkat get closer but he knows not to touch him. 

He cries himself out over the mangled corpse of that _thing._

A grotesque creation of blood and cotton and thread. 

“Dave?”

Karkat kneels down next to him, avoids Cal’s mangled body and only looks at his boyfriend, his boyfriend who looks so much more fragile than he’s used to at that moment. 

“I had to fix it, I had to save him.”

“Save who, Dave?”

“... Me.”

Dave is aware that once he showed up, the timeline had immediately split off into an alternative version of his own memories, a new timeline that he doesn’t so much as regret making.

Karkat helps him stand, and looks at his messy hands and back to his tear-stained and ruddy red cheeks, his sinuses are swollen from his cries, and his voice is painfully cracking when he speaks.

“Let’s get you all cleaned up.”

  
  


Dave waits for his throat to heal, he’d torn something during his murder of that horrid puppet, and now it was healed.

He just had to know if he’d done it.

“Be safe.” Karkat presses a kiss to his cheek and then another to his lips, gentle and loving.

“I will.”

  
  


Stepping through time is never the best feeling but when Dave gets to the apartment, he knocks and someone he doesn’t know answers the door.

“Uh, hi?” They greet and Dave frowns.

“Does Dave Strider live here?”

They look confused and shake their head, probably put off by Dave’s scars and his shades.

“Alright, maybe I got the wrong apartment.. Sorry about that.”

They nod and smile, they assure him that it’s okay before closing the door.

Dave tilts his head and walks away, worry burning in his chest as he cracks his fingers before sifting through the threads of time, feeling along them and ah- there he is.

He can take a walk there, to where he can feel that other Dave.

Walking along the streets of Houston while on his Earth, it awakens some sort of nostalgia that brings a sad smile to his face. 

He finds himself in a better part of the city and now he’s a bit confused. 

Dave walks along the sidewalk of a niche little community of houses, they look like the type of houses that Dave had always wanted to live in when he was really young, before the hope of ever being _normal_ left him. 

He hesitates as he climbs the stairs up to the porch and knocks, worrying for a moment that he’s in the wrong house before the door open and-

“Holy shit.”

Wide, shocked eyes are looking at him, lips that are parted partially in disbelief.

Dave feels the same, but the shock fades into a smile, one so wide it hurts.

“Hey, little man.”

No bruises line his eyes, no bandages or cuts or suspicious casts. 

“I thought it was a dream.”

Dave only shakes his head and the other steps out onto the porch and hugs him, so casually and freely that it shocks Dave back into a stupor.

“I don’t know what you did all of those years ago when you took Cal but.. thank you so much. Thank you so fucking much.”

“What happened? After I left?”

Dave- he’s not so little anymore, he’ll just call him David, motions for them to sit, and so he does. 

It feels like it’ll be a long story.  
  


* * *

_  
Big Dave leaves with Cal, and the only thing he can think is that Bro just might kill him when he wakes up._

_He doesn’t wake up for hours, and when he does, it’s done screaming like he’s in more pain than he can bear and then he falls completely silent._

_Dave waits, too scared to move from his bed and then he hears shuffling, stumbling and the bathroom door slams open before he hears the sound of vomiting._

_It goes silent after that and then his bedroom door slowly opens and Bro stumbles in, leaning against the doorframe._

_He’s sweating hard and his hair hangs limply into his eyes- he isn’t wearing his shades for once and he looks confused, looking around Dave’s bedroom like he’s never seen it before his unfocused eyes fall on Dave._

_“Call the ambulance.” His voice is weak and it sounds different, in a way that Dave can’t describe and his request is_ odd _and then he’s slumping to the floor_ _and he starts to convulse._

_Dave can’t describe the fear and panic that he felt, that Bro would die if he didn’t hurry and his hands shake as he dials for 911 and asks for an ambulance because his brother is “shaking and his eyes are rolling back and his-his nose is bleeding, it’s bleeding so much”._

_The lady on the other end of the phone tries to calm him down and it sort of works, he’s told to keep an eye on him and to turn him onto his side and make sure his breathing doesn’t stop._

_It does._

_It stops twice, the first for about thirty seconds and the second for a minute and Dave swears that his heart stops too._

_When the ambulance arrives, Dave and Bro are taken to the hospital and then he has to sit in a room with a nice lady who asks him a lot of questions._

_Was Bro taking drugs, was he drinking, how’d he fracture his nose, if Bro had ever hurt him, so on and so forth._

_He’s scared that he’s going to be taken away from Bro, he was always perceptive of that possibility, and for a moment, it’s tempting._

_To just give in and tell her everything but he remembers the moments that Bro stopped breathing, his weak voice, the way Big Dave promised he’d make it better._

_He wants to know if his hope was worth it._

_Bro stayed in the hospital for four days, he slept through the first two, and when he was awake, he barely remembered anything._

_He explicitly remembers that Bro asked for his baby to a very confused nurse._

_“My baby,” He’d said, “Dave. He’s only two, I need to- I need him here, to watch him, we don’t have any other family.”_

_And upon seeing the seven year old, it was as if he’d never seen him before, like he’d honestly expected a toddler._

_They say he has a mild case of amnesia, not too unusual for seizure patients, but concerning nonetheless._

_After they release Bro, he has them take the bus home since they don’t have a car, and he doesn’t speak the entire time._

_He’s thinking._

_Dave mentally goes through all the different punishments that will be inflicted upon him when they get home._

_He feels like he’s marching to the guillotine as they ride the elevator and walk to the door, he’s certain that the moment they cross the threshold, Bro is going to demand a strife, but instead, he looks around and looks just as confused as he did before._

_Dave doesn’t know what to do until he remembers._

_“Check the recordings.”_

_“Recordings?”_

_“From the cameras. You keep them in your room.”_

_Bro nods, visibly confused but now that Dave can see the unobstructed view of his eyes, he can see the vulnerability as well, which isn’t a word he’d typically associate with his Bro in any other circumstances._

_He ambles off to his room and Dave sits on the floor._

_And he waits._

_He falls asleep waiting but wakes up to the sound of vomiting and his mind takes him back to the last time but this time, he can hear what sounds like crying too._

_There’s running water and the flush of a toilet and then Bro stumbles into the living room, staring at Dave with an emotion that he can’t decipher._

_“Bro?”_

_“I did that to you?”_

_Dave shifts uncomfortably but nods and Bro looks like his whole world just shattered right in front of him, his eyes get glossy and Dave can understand the emotion he sees now— it’s helplessness._

_He doesn’t know how to fix the mess he’s made._

_Dave slowly climbs to his feet, and in time, he’ll consider this a show of trust as he walks over to Bro and he hugs him._

_“It’s okay, you were sick.”_

_“I hurt you.”_

_“You were just sick.”_

_“I hurt you so bad, Dave, I-“_

_Dave hugs him tighter, because he has to be the strong one right now, he needs to keep Bro together even when he has the power to destroy him._

_There’s a part of him that wants to._

_But he thinks of Big Dave’s tears and the way he promised to fix it._

_“You were sick,” He repeats softly. “But we’ll make you all better.”_

* * *

  
  


“.. It took a long time. Therapy for both of us, Bro even tried to turn himself in once it got really bad and we were in the watch books for CPS for a while but,” He motions to the neighborhood around them.

“I don’t know what you did when you took Cal but it was the best thing you could have ever done and I’m so thankful. Thank you so much.” Looking into David’s eyes, Dave feels.. relieved.

“You gave me my brother back.”

They part with a hug and Dave steps through time feeling lighter than he did before.

Karkat is waiting for him on the other side and Dave can only smile, he can see the relief in the slight slump of his boyfriend’s tense shoulders.

“What happened?”

“I did it. I saved him.”

And as Dave speaks, he can feel the shift in time.

The birth of thousands of timelines where Bro is better, where Cal doesn’t even exist, where the game will never touch him.

He feels a weight fall off of him that he didn’t even know he’d been carrying.

Dave knows that now, as he learns to forgive himself, he will never forget the way David looked at him.

He’s saved the world, he became a god, but nothing will ever compare to knowing that he saved the one person who needed it the most.

Himself. 


End file.
